Page:Americans (1922).djvu/14

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the root of all fond sentiments related to it, in that instant there came to me, as if in a vision, our "divine mother," the spirit of America as the clear-eyed among our poets and statesmen have seen her, assuring me that the higher piety demands no such immolation. That which we have loved in our country, she declared, that which we have honored in her, that which reveals her to our hearts as proudly beautiful is in no way dangerous to Humanity. On the contrary, the more deeply we loved the true constituent elements of her loveliness, the more clearly we understood her inmost purposes and set ourselves to further them, the more perfectly we should find ourselves in accord with the "friends of mankind" in all nations.

Shall we shun music because we know that barbaric music arouses the cave-man in us and sets the pulses throbbing, the feet dancing, to the "blood-lust song"—forgetting that music of another sort, seizing upon these same impressionable quivering senses of ours, may masteringly attune us to the most harmonious impulses of our nature? Because we fear the tom-toms shall we smash the cathedral organ? All things which have great power are greatly dangerous till they are controlled to right ends; but they are not more dangerous than weak things put in a place where strength is required. At the present moment the isolated individuals and scattered bands of pale-